Nook's Specs Are Exaggerated, Again
I had a lot of fun reviewing Amazon's new Kindles in my Times column this week. (Yes, I had a Times column this week — it's just that it appeared on Monday, a few days earlier than its usual Thursday spot, thanks to Amazon's release schedule.)
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the latest round in a four-year review-cycle duel between Amazon and Barnes & Noble that the corpus has tracked from the 2007 one-week Kindle letter to Bezos onward. By August 2010 the New York Times framed the Kindle as leaving rivals 'farther back,' and by April 2010 TechCrunch was already conceding the iPad had become the real threat to dedicated readers. Against that backdrop, Pogue's charge that Nook specs are exaggerated 'again' lands as a credibility problem for Barnes & Noble rather than a one-off complaint.
The timing detail matters too: Pogue notes his Times column moved up to Monday purely because of Amazon's release schedule — evidence of how much gravity Amazon's hardware cadence now exerts on the review economy. The same week's confirmed reporting has an IHS iSuppli teardown pegging the Kindle Fire's build cost at about $202, roughly its selling price, and Amazon releasing the Fire's Android source code to comply with licensing.
First-order effects
- Barnes & Noble takes a second documented hit to its specification claims from a high-profile reviewer, just as its Nook line competes against a Kindle lineup Pogue is reviewing in the same column.
- Amazon's release schedule is dictating editorial calendars — Pogue's column moved off its usual Thursday slot to accommodate the Kindle launch.
Second-order effects
- With the Fire costing about $202 to build at roughly its selling price, per the IHS iSuppli teardown, Barnes & Noble cannot win a price war and is pushed toward competing on claimed specs — precisely where its credibility is now under attack.
- A rumored Citigroup prediction from analyst Mark Mahaney that Amazon may ship its own smartphone next year raises the stakes for Nook's tablet ambitions beyond e-readers.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, dedicated e-readers cede the low end to near-cost Android tablets, leaving Barnes & Noble to differentiate on content and retail rather than hardware economics.
- Repeated spec-exaggeration findings point toward reviewers and teardown firms becoming the de facto verification layer for consumer-hardware marketing claims.
The trend: E-reader competition is shifting from paper-like reading devices to near-cost Android tablets, with independent reviews and teardowns arbitrating whose specifications can be believed.